Hindu Religious Books 3

Upnishads

Next in the series of holy books are Upnishads. Upnishads starts where Vedas ends and so called vedanant. Upnishads means sitting near. When pupils sit near and around the guru to learn and they teach them it was called Upnishad. Veda mantras were chanted in the public where as the Upnishads were discussed in private between the scholars or teacher and pupils.

As great care was taken to maintain the privacy and secrecy of the Upnishads so these were not so public and in long course of time these were lost. They propagated through verbal tradition so no efforts were made to translate them or keep records of them in any form.

It was only Adi Shankracharya who wrote the interpretation of upnishads. He wrote interpretation of 10 upnishiads. These Upnishads are ranked very high in knowledge so there were very few peoples who understood these and only few peoples were willing to understand these.

These are basically about the enlightenment, so Mahavira and Budha also went through them and interpreted these upnishads in their language. These were the experience of the persons who got enlightenment and were not really communicable. They propagated through the verbal system and also called shrutis. There is no writer of these Upnishads. Actually some enlightened persons and saints experienced and there pupils and followers wrot their experiences, so there is some gap and controversies. Also it is the sum up of so many saints so it has some confusion as the way they proceeded to get enlightenment was different.

Lord Budha understood these and got enlightenment. His pupils wrote his experience. As with the spread of Budhism his teachings also spread outside India, majorily in countries ;like China and Japan.

There was no confusion in these countries as there was only one version of Upnishads ie the version given by lord Budha, so they have more faith in these teachings or Upnishads. Where as in India there was still confusion persisting and there were so many schools of philosophy.

Moreover in india secrecy was mentained which was not the case in China and Japan in Budha religion and culture. They developed the art of enlightenment which is still prevailing in these countries and they are ahead of India in the field of enlightenment on account of these teachings of Upnishads or teachings of Lord Budha.

These Upnishads were translated in Persian language by Dara Shikoh eldest son of emperor Shanjahan (mugal emperor)

There are more than 200 Upnishads but there are some main Upnishads as under

Chandogya

Kena

Aitareya

Kaushitaki

Katha

Mundaka

Taitriyaka

Brihadaranyaka

Svetasvatara

Isa

Prasna

Mandukya

Maitri

Of all these Upnishads Brihadarnyaka is the oldest.  It tells, “meditation is the only way of uniting ones soul with the Almighty” and know and realize that almighty and we are not two separate entities. There is only one entity that is Brhamn.